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'Snapshots' has fine acting, but little drama
(by Bob Wilcox - June 11, 2008)
Most theater groups call themselves a “theater” or a “company,” as in “Repertory Theatre of St. Louis” or “Muddy Waters Theatre Company.” But founders William Roth, Milt Zoth and David Wassilak named their new company “St. Louis Actors’ Studio,” making it a place for artists to study, learn and create.
Through its first year of existence, the Actors’ Studio has lived up to its name by holding regular workshops for actors, directors and writers. Playing off the season’s “family dynamic” theme, the workshops, in the words of Artistic Director Zoth, involved “months of improvisation and storytelling about what it is like to be a part of a family as one encounters the passages of life.”
Now the improvisation and storytelling have been condensed into a one-hour presentation called Snapshots. Under Zoth’s direction and on a simple set of a few chairs and tables, five actors from the workshop present brief pictures of family life from birth to death.
If one of the aims of the workshops was to sharpen the acting skills of the participants, they clearly have been successful. The performers display a range of skills at a very high level. Four of them — Anna Blair, Cindy Duggan, Roger Erb and Tyler Vickers — already have a history of strong performances in the St. Louis area. I’d be hard put to single out any improvement here over their best work in the past, but they impress with the consistency and focus of their acting in Snapshots. The fifth actor, Syd Andrews, is, if I read her biography in the program correctly, just finishing high school. Though she lets the clarity of her speech slip sometimes, she holds her own with the veterans quite well.
But if Snapshots shows us actors who have conquered the difficulties of acting, it also shows us that playwriting may be even harder than acting.
A poet can simply pour forth emotion. A novelist can spend pages describing a place, a mood, a character, the character’s thoughts and feelings. A playwright has two or three or four people talking to each other, and that’s it. That’s all the playwright gets to work with.
Playwrights have found ways to fudge this, from the choruses of the Greeks to the soliloquies of Shakespeare. At their best, though, these fudges do extend dialogues, whether it’s Hamlet arguing with himself or the chorus warning Oedipus not to push his search for his origins too far.
Probably less than half of Snapshots is dramatic dialogue. As the title tells us, it’s a series of brief pictures of family life. Many of these snapshots have one person talking to us, narrating a family memory. Anna Blair spins a tale of the joys and sorrows of a neighborhood hula-hoop contest, and Roger Erb narrates a disastrous performance as Rudolph in a school Christmas play.
The number of dramatic scenes picks up as the characters grow into puberty and adolescence, as parents contend with sons and daughters in the throes of raging hormones. Blind dates run off the rails. Wedding ceremonies barely escape disasters — or run headlong into disasters. Marriages go sour.
The last of these leads to the freshest, most sharply observed and cleverly written scene of the piece. Duggan and Vickers are divorcing parents; Andrews and Blair are their daughters, choosing which parent to live with on the basis of which parent will have a swimming pool and who will give them a car. So much for selfless love in the family.
Snapshots continues through Vickers’ movingly performed lyric monologue of lament for the loss of a wife claimed too young by death, and goes on to a gently humorous duet by Blair and Duggan as residents of a “senior citizens” establishment.
As this list of topics suggests, Snapshots covers familiar territory. It covers it with precise, well-shaped language and excellent performances. But it covers the familiar territory in by and large familiar ways, with little that is fresh and exciting. And as someone who goes to the theater wanting to see drama, I wish it had more drama.
Snapshots continues Thursdays through Sundays through June 22 at the Gaslight Theater, 358 N. Boyle Ave. For tickets and information, call 458-2978, or visit www.stlas.org.
Bob Wilcox also reviews theatre for KDHX-FM, 88.1, for cable’s Two on the Aisle and online at www.kdhx.org.
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